I used to love the old trilogy of STATS books: Scouting
Notebook, Major League Handbook, and Player Profiles. Unfortunately,
in 2003, The Sporting News got involved and discontinued the latter
two books. In their place, they produced the inferior 2003 Register
and 2003 Guide. The Register looks back at the stats for the past season,
but these are "baseball card" stats. In other words, they just give
you the basics and only for the previous year. Player Profiles used
to give stats for the entire careers of all currently active big leaguers,
and the Major League Handbook went over the previous year with a finer-toothed
comb than the Register. The Guide looks ahead to the coming year, with
schedules and things of that nature. But it too pales in comparison
to the old books. In 2005, I replaced this book with Ron Shandler's
Baseball Forecaster. In 2006, I found out that the Scouting Notebook
had been merged into the Baseball rEgister, so I am giving it another
chance this year. Comments to follow where this sentence is after I
read the book. 744 pp.